The O's haven't (yet) dropped a player who could possibly be a huge contributor to the next Orioles playoff team. While Villar, Alberto, Nunez were pretty lousy money saving moves, I don't think any of them would play a significant role in the next good O's team.
Means could be.
If you wanted to defend a position that suggests money isn't or won't be an issue for them and use these types of examples as evidence, ok, but there's broader evidence that 'something' else is going on.
There have plenty of opportunities to leverage money in ways to proliferate better talent across the system....they have chosen to not do that. They've made moves to literally save less than a million dollars. They requested 2 players making under 7M total defer part of their salaries in arbitration. They've cut the MASN staff in half including the unceremonious release of long-standing people. They've cut the pre and post production shows for both Teams and fired senior staff at MASN.
At every turn, we have evidence of things that they've done that are well outside of 'baseball moves'. Those are just the things that see the light of day for the public. The Orioles were likely hurt less than any other team in MLB by the pandemic and they are likely close to their revenue floor and have literally worked to strip every expense that wasn't some pre-commitment out of the process.
I guess it could all just be coincidence and they really have a deep Organizational commitment to doing everything they can to put the best possible team on the field as soon as possible and I'm just ridiculous. I'll stick with my explanation.